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Emmy award winning editor at NBC blogs about FCPX
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[Herb Sevush] “The standard procedure for cutting multicam pre NLE was to record a quad split of the field cameras, using one of those boxes used by apt. building security departments. I’d rough cut the show with those and then cover them over with the master shots once the cuts were tight – this is the same deal. It’s the way I cut on FCP before they had the multi-cam feature, and trust me I was not happy about having to use it after working with a real multicam feature for the few years before.”
Quad Split! Way back when I was a driver/post utility on Barney Miller, our Quad Split (which I believe was a Danny Arnold invention) was a fifth camera in a sequestered room pointing at a stack of four monitors (with camera feeds from the floor) and a timecode monitor positioned in the center. The editors used to make paper cuts which the AEs would assemble on a CMX. Ah, the memories.
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And to think that kind of thing was the easy way. At least we didn’t have to brush on iron solution and cut with razor blades, though I do admit to trying it once – just for fun.
Tim
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Ha! I remember reading about your “quad split” in a broadcast trade and doing a forehead-slap. What a great idea!
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[Bill Davis] “An accessible, separate workspace that is task specific for audio. And heck, maybe one for Color as well. “
YES! I ain’t a programmer, but it would seem they only need a GUI.
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[Clint Wardlow] “a bitch of a time making a quicktime file that plays decently as a Withoutabox online screener”
Actually that’s a real pain in the @$$. I used “H.264 LAN streaming” and it worked pretty well after I added compression markers where necessary. The running time was 12 minutes. I used a slower bit rate for a 23 minute short (that no one seems to want to screen). That longer movie takes forever to load in withoutabox too, so I’m suggesting to you to also send DVDs because you can’t be certain that the film screener will wait long enough for the movie to load.
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[Andrew Kimery] “Talent and skill are the telling factors… as long delays introduced by not using the best, or even the right, tool for the job don’t don’t bring you down first. I mean, can I use the a tack hammer to drive a large nail? Sure, it would work in a pinch but I sure as heck wouldn’t choose to frame a whole house with one (especially if I framed houses for a living and competed against other framers for jobs). “
I’ll risk angering the analogy gods once again…
Today, hammers are for the do-it-yourself clan and for touch up stuff. Nobody actually sees them as a smart way to handle a large project like framing a house anymore. They use compressors and nail guns. Period.
It’s a large complex system requiring power, air hoses, etc. but the efficiencies of the complex approach nets much better and more efficient results than swinging a framing hammer. So FCP-Legacy is a superb nail gun system. You can build ANYTHING with it. It was great!
But the largest “nail gun” company stepped back and has created a smaller, cheaper “power hammer” (lets’ call it PowerHammerX) that’s self-contained and doesn’t require all those compressors and hoses.
But right now, it’s still a new tool – not yet as fully featured or fully powered as what it replaced. So it’s not ready to transform the industry and make all those existing compressors and hoses obsolete. But the convenience of being able to move around freely and drive nails with no more effort than the nail gun users – inside a much sleeker and more portable form factor- is pretty attractive.
And for those who do lots of light framing with modest dimensional lumber that the new tool works well for – well, they’ve seen the writing on the wall. They’re increasingly leaving the compressor at home and working with the new smaller and slimmer tool.
If the PowerHammerX folks can raise the power of their system – and prove it’s just as robust and solid as the older system. It’s got a really bright future.
Nothing more than that.
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor
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[Bill Davis] “I’ll risk angering the analogy gods once again…”
I was just speaking to the general idea that tools don’t matter when in the real world they do. My post contained no hidden meanings nor subtle digs.
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While technically you can, is it going to be anything that anyone would want to watch?
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I belong to this group of people (as posted above) who read a lot, type in a reply and don’t post it.
I don’t belong to any of the groups of people which are FCPX Lovers or FCPX Haters.
I belong to the group of people which says we have to make it work.
I belong to the group of people which says we have to make it look fantastic, appealing and produce a (finacially) successful movie.
I belong to the group of people which says we have to keep the deadline.Some of this, maybe all, can be achieved with FCPX in a specific environment or with a specific job. Other things can’t be achieved in another environment/job.
In Germany there is kind of saying “Don’t keep the ashes, but keep the fire”. With FCPX Apple went a new way and forgot some of the “fire”.
So people who say “it’s not that cuddly” are right, those who say “it’s cold or icy” and those who say “take an additional jacket” are right as well, also those who say “it’s cuddly – where is your problem” are right.
It’s all about what you want to do and how you want to do it. Again, that doesn’t mean that any of these kind of editors does anything wrong and should be hated or lovedAn example in the original (old) blog had been multi-camera set up and handling. This example shows that there is no real need for Mike Fernanandes for this feature. Others do need it, for example me (or better those people who are involved in the production). The example given from Herb is one of the best for “keeping the fire” for the future. The old fashioned split screen can be a real good method (I did that for years even before FCP was released). And it is meanwhile integrated into FCPX.
yYears ago we tried to set up an efficient workflow for a lot of (world wide) daily soaps which uses only 2 cams for a 45 min show and external audio – at the end we decided to use FCP. We succeeded.
Earlier this year several people of the AAA teams flew over the ocean to watch this workflow. Everybody said “Whow” nobody said “We can make this work with our current (upcoming) version”.
These people (my customers) won’t publish anything in any forum or blog – that was already mentioned above.My personal things…
… one is that with FCPX I lost more or less all control about metadata.
That doesn’t make FCPX a bad app – most people don’t need it. Maybe I’m just a one in a million.
And you can have two points of view with metadata. One is to keep and edit all of them in an event or project, the other is to keep them outside or better inside a file. Most of the people don’t care about what is kept in a file and just are happy to have have a smart NLE using FCPX.The other thing most people don’t use is subtitling. Both FCP and Avid offer some hooks to create a collaborative workflow. With FCPX meanwhile a little weak hook is there. FCP had been the most open system and that’s why I mentioned the “keep the fire”.
Once upon a time Shane Ross send me an email about “how can my subtitles be spell checked and grammar checked by somebody else than me for a show”. FCP allowed to do that – FCPX allows that only somehow (meanwhile). There are ten thousands of users who just use an app of mine to juggle those subtitles forth and back. With FCPX a lot of options vanished. And there are many “FCPX Lovers” which finally said “It’s impossible” even though I tried to give them help to manage the job.There are more examples about what works or doesn’t work. Even for the approach how to edit there are a lot – but that’s the same for all other NLEs.
Finally the title of the topic was wrong:
“Emmy award winning editor at NBC blogs about FCPX “
It’s emotional and divides people into emotional groups. But who cares?
I got several awards as well in a world which most of you don’t know.
So what would happen (if I’m not under NDA) if I post something like: “World wide known company XXX says that after a year of testing FCPX does not match their needs”
Probably nothing would happen rather than people would spend some of their valuable free time to start a discussion.Just my 2 cents
-Andreas
Spherico
https://www.spherico.com/filmtools -
[Andreas Kiel] “So what would happen (if I’m not under NDA) if I post something like: “World wide known company XXX says that after a year of testing FCPX does not match their needs””
Those types of posts have been very common on this board Andreas, from Mark R. to Walter B. It’s because there’s been such a dearth of posts about FCPX being used by professional facilities that this post stirred up one of the more active threads in a long time.
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